


My Religion

by Pandemic



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-01
Updated: 2015-05-01
Packaged: 2018-03-26 15:24:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3855619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pandemic/pseuds/Pandemic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The thrum of <em>Family, Pack, Protect, Worship</em> reaches a crescendo and it only goes blessedly quiet when, painted with blood and gore, Daryl leans forward and wraps him in a fierce hug. Rick holds on, knuckles white."</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Religion

Initially, Rick hated Daryl.  Like two bucks fighting over the spoils of war, all Rick remembers is the heat of anger and the stifling arrogance that he knew better than this bedraggled redneck. He can't pinpoint when the heat changed, shifted, turned into something fuelled by lust rather than bloodlust. All he knows is that he finds himself having to shake out of constantly observing the curve of Daryl's arms, the slope of his neck, the dip of his ass.

His newfound lechery didn't go unnoticed, and in the prison he remembers Michonne smirking and smug, asking if he would ever act on it.

Which was a foolish question, of course he wouldn't.  Daryl was as straight as the arrows he shot and the family's protection was worth more than any minute chance of happiness Rick might gain. So he keeps himself busy committing Daryl's every muscle to memory, so much so he thinks he has the winged tattoo carved into his irises.

Daryl is _glorious_ to look at. All lithe, lean muscle with nothing spared, nothing wasted. His hair falls, limp and greasy because no matter how much he hears Carol mother and insist, the man is like a child refusing bath time. The Rick before would have gotten into his face and probably called him a kid. The Rick now knows that it is part of Daryl’s damned-near hero complex, not willing to take what could be used for someone else.

* * *

 

When the prison falls the pain Rick is near silent with agony, from both the external wounds and the internal confirmation that nothing he could do would ever be good enough to keep his family strong. He allows himself a minute to mourn what could have been before throwing everything he has behind keeping Carl safe and praying that everyone else made it out alive.

He will not entertain the idea that his people could be anything but. That _Daryl_ could be anything but. So he warns Carl against looking back and hates that his son is, once again, the one looking after him.

* * *

 

It’s good for a while, Michonne and him guarding Carl with a fierceness only negated by their equal adoration for the boy. Michonne brings out a lightness in him that Rick hasn’t seen since the Time Before, and when she makes his son giggle one night he has to rock back and close his eyes, soaking in the sound. It serves as a balm against the gaping hole in his chest where the others used to be, where _Daryl_ used to be.

Every night they steal from death he stares up into the black, watching the stars, hoping that somewhere Daryl is doing the same.

* * *

 

 _Daryl’s back, Daryl’s back_ thrums through Rick’s veins as he watches the man step out from behind the car. The mantra adds to the already violently loud _Protect Carl_ that seeps from his skin. He’s coiled, ready to strike with but a whisper of a thought from Daryl. He thinks that’s the plan, but pauses when Daryl begins to speak and it is with mounting dismay he watches Daryl offer himself up to the horrors of this world.

He can almost feel his bones, shift, and reassemble in a form ready to destroy all those that would keep his family from him.  He hears Daryl groan under the relentless attack, hears Carl sob, and he feels himself tense and move to the offense.

In a quick move he's face to face with the leader, Joe, head buried in the man's neck in a move much more intimate than the situation suggests.

The thrum of _Family, Pack, Protect, Worship_ reaches a crescendo and it only goes blessedly quiet when, painted with blood and gore, Daryl leans forward and wraps him in a fierce hug. Rick holds on, knuckles white.

* * *

 

It’s been a long time since Rick has felt truly hopeless, but on his knees in front of a trough with the blood of that kid he sent away dripping down the drain comes as close as he ever will. He catches Daryl’s eyes and tries to paint the insides of his soul across his eyes, everything left unsaid and unspoken between the pair. Daryl only watches him with eyes clogged by trust, and in that moment Rick knows he’ll step up once more, he’ll always shrug on the role of protector as long as Daryl’s throws his faith behind him. So he rolls his shoulders forward, and voice low, threatens Gareth with everything he has.

And as Terminus comes down around his ears, he hears the thrum of his blood sing once more.

 _Family, Pack, Protect, Worship_.

* * *

 

Rick doesn’t realize Daryl is gone until they are sat drinking communion wine, the threat he had uttered to Gabriel still fresh on his lips. After warning Gabriel of what he would do to those who threatened the well-being of his family, he could almost laugh at the irony that they were missing two.

It stung like hell that it was Carol who was also missing, that the disappearance smacked of a different time when Daryl had put his faith in another over Rick. So he chases the drink down his throat and watches the rest of his family with hooded eyes. He won’t go looking tonight, he doesn’t know if he can face the indisputable fact that Daryl saw what he has become, watched him rip Joe’s throat out and cover himself in the guts of Carl’s would-be rapist, and doesn’t like what he sees anymore.

For once, he’d like to know that someone could see underneath the monster he’d become. To look at him covered in blood, see his scars, and love him anyway.

* * *

 

Rick vaguely hears the doors slam open, but he can’t look away from his hands that shake with a tremor rooted in his soul. He can’t register anything but the mantra that once again clouds his head, shouts through his brain a fierce warrior cry of _Family, Pack, Protect, Worship._

He saw the cannibals raise a gun to the door that held Judith crying behind it, and acted on pure instinct. He threw his weight behind the red machete, and struck until there was nothing left but blood and guts painting the floor. The aftershocks of adrenaline make his arms twitch, blood dripping from the crook of his brow, rust bitter on his tongue.

His brain is filled with white noise, a cacophony so loud he raises his hands to his skull as though he could press it out through willpower alone. So he initially doesn’t feel the hand that grabs his shoulder until the pressure becomes greater, and when he turns to see his Hunter stood in front of him he staggers a moment.

Daryl leans forward to grab ahold of his arm, prop him up by his elbow, and Rick chokes on a sob halfway through a prayer and a scream.

 _“Daryl._ ” He chokes, _“God.”_

Daryl crowds forward into his space and presses his forehead to Rick’s own, eyes bright, and for the first time since he noticed him gone, Rick’s brain goes silent, mind comforted by the presence of his touchstone in the dark.

* * *

  
_Daryl’s taking too long_ is all Rick can think about as they get the two cops into the warehouse in Atlanta, and it is that thought that has him running back.

When he sees another man in uniform pressing down on Daryl, pushing his hunter nearer and nearer to the jaws of a walker, he hears his blood calling again, demanding penance. He puts a shot through the head of the walker beside them before turning to the man who thought it would be a good idea to fuck with his family.

“Okay,” the guy speaks, cocky and low, “You win asshole.”

He almost doesn’t hear the shitty surrender over the blood pounding in his ears. His eyes flicker, once, to check Daryl is okay, and he catalogs every bruise he can see. He’ll beat a mirror image of every single one that has been inflicted onto this son of a bitch’s skin before he’s done with him.

 _Family, Pack, Protect, Worship_ sits at the base of his skull like a headache, but the tone is different, fiercer. Watching the cop straddling Daryl, eyes manic and delighted as he watched him panic has kicked him into overdrive. He hears Daryl call his name once, twice, three times, before he acknowledges him.

Daryl stands behind the cop, eyes on Rick. They are soft, understanding and desperate.

“Rick. Three is better than two.”

There are words, sayings, left unspoken in the pauses in that sentence. There are things Rick can hear through the layer of the letters, the cadence of the speech. And it is those left unsaid that he listens to, that crowd through the demand for bloody justice and let him lower the gun.

* * *

 

Alexandria drives Rick mad and calms him down in equal parts. He watches Judith pitch forward in attempt to walk, he sees Carl laughing with kids his own age, Daryl mount up on a motorbike that roars in defiance with every rev of the engine, and can’t help but be happy his family are safe, protected.

But he sees the community here, spots the weaknesses, and the chinks in the armour, and rages that outside he would have put down the majority of this group with a bullet to the brain without a thought. They play happy families as though there are not people who would kill and lay waste to every person within these walls to claim Alexandria as their own.

And every night he tries to engage Daryl in conversation he feels the gulf between them widen, yawn and gape until the distance seems unfathomable. He watches the walls around his Archer build back up and strengthen to a point he doesn’t know what to say anymore and with every stilted sentence he thinks he can almost hear his heart break.

He wants to tell Daryl that when Olivia came over with a smile and a basket of cupcakes he had a sinister whisper cling to his heart and tell him to snap her neck. He wants to confess that when Pete staggered over with a couple of beers and a smirk he thumbed the trigger on his gun in a repetitive motion until the man left and he no longer felt like pressing the chamber to the drunkard’s head. He wants to beg Daryl to make the crescendo of _Family, Pack, Protect, Worship_ stop because Rick can’t hear it another day and not think he has stepped into the dark side of insanity. But Daryl is constantly outside the walls, outside Rick’s reach, and outside the length of Rick’s protection. And the fact the most words Daryl had strung together in Rick’s presence had been in connection with Judith’s newfound love of walking dug into Rick’s side with every step.

He’s familiar now with a different type of law than the one the oblivious residents of Alexandria still cling to. That threats from the inside will collapse the system far faster than any from the outside.

He can see the cracks in Carl’s demeanor start to appear, and so that’s why he allows Carl out on a run with Daryl when he asks. Carl initially suggests bringing some of the others from Alexandria along as a peace offering to help build trust, but the idea of allowing Carl out with walking weaknesses like those around Alexandria is enough to have Rick running for his gun. The run is a fairly safe one, along a road they had already cleared, so the likelihood of running into a herd of walkers was fairly low. He knows Carl needs it, needs to remind himself of what is out there before he buries himself again. But when they don’t clock in for their half hour check-in, Rick instinctively knows that something is up and suits up ready for war.

Abraham and Michonne fall into step beside him, and Olivia doesn’t question why they arm up to the teeth, seeing the look on Rick’s face and keeping quiet. Rick is glad, if she had protested he might have forced a bullet through her kneecap.

They roar forward along the tarmac once the doors are open, tires screeching in protest. Michonne and Abraham know better than to question whether the noise is necessary, instead exchanging silent glances in the wing mirror that Rick pretends to not see.

When they spot Carl, Rick is blindsided by the relief that clogs his throat. He’s out before the car has even stopped rolling and engulfing Carl in a hug so fierce he swears he can hear his boy’s bones creak in protest. He looks round, eyes wild, for the other man, and when he can’t spot him he turns back to Carl and dreads the look of sorrow in the boy’s face.

“Daryl?” he questions, and when Carl doesn’t answer he feels his knees buckle, _“Daryl.”_ He sobs.

“C’mon, c’mon, quick. He might…” Carl starts, and that’s all Rick needs to hear before they both bundle back into the car and Rick taps out a staccato rhythm against his thigh, every tap a prayer that they aren’t too late, that he isn’t too late.

* * *

 

When they come across the car park, it’s easy to spot Daryl. Or at least, spot Daryl’s location as the walkers crowd a single SUV alone in on the tarmac.

For the first time, Rick hears the mantra start up in his head, and for once he accepts it, shrugs into it and uses each word to put down any walker that strides toward him.

_Family._

_Pack._

_Protect._

_Worship._

He shrugs on the shoulder strap of the gun when his shotgun’s barrel is empty and puts further bullets through the walking dead between him and his archer. And it isn’t until Daryl darts out from the car, settles in back to back with Rick up against those who would take this fucked up slice of a good life away from him that Rick’s head quietens. He bludgeons the last walker with the butt of his rifle, ammo gone, blood spattered across his sheriff’s shirt.

He turns to Daryl then and grabs hold of him, running his hands across him to convince himself that yes, Daryl is alive, the sole religion Rick puts faith in still has a shrine.

“Jesus Christ.” He murmurs, voice broken, and Daryl grins a bloody broken smile.

“Nope, just Daryl.” And it’s been so long Rick’s heard Daryl’s voice so happy that he can’t help but bite out a laugh that turns into a full-bellied roll of laughter, joined in by Carl’s giggling, Michonne’s high voice and Abraham’s low timbre.

Rick looks into Daryl’s eyes, sparkling with mirth, and can’t help himself from crowding into Daryl’s space and pressing his lips to the archer’s. Their teeth clash in a painful move that changes and shifts into something with heat once the angle changes.

“Perhaps knee deep in walker’s carcasses isn’t the best place to start screwing, you horny shits.” Abraham’s voice is tinged with humor and Rick rocks back on his heels. Carl giggles and Daryl looks at Rick like he’s just found the cure for the infection with a shaky hand still swirling patterns on Rick’s forearm.

Daryl speaks, voice husky with unshed emotion, “What the fuck is normal anyway?”

 

**Author's Note:**

> A companion piece to [Juggernaut](http://archiveofourown.org/works/3701863) as from Rick's point of view.
> 
> Find me on [tumblr](http://youaremylodestar.tumblr.com/).


End file.
